Blood Beliefs in Early Modern Europe - A PhD Thesis by Francesca Matteoni (2009).pdf

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Blood beliefs in early modern Europe
Francesca Matteoni
Submitted to the University of Hertfordshire for the degree of
PhD.
January, 2009
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Contents
Abstract
1. Blood themes: Introduction
1.1 Blood, feelings and the soul: perspectives
1.2 Late medieval and early modern Europe: blood and the sealed body
1.3 History and Anthropology: methodologies
1.4 Blood, power and violence. Anthropological views
1.5 Chapters’ outline
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5
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15
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2. Drawing blood: The Devil’s pact and witchcraft
2.1 Witchcraft and blood
2.2 Intruders: from Jews to witches
2.3 The devil’s brood and the cannibalistic feast
2.4 The pact
2.5 Harmful magic: vampirism, lameness and pins
2.6 Domestic spaces
2.7 The decaying body
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3. Supernatural beings: Fairies, vampires, werewolves
3.1 Blood and supernatural beings
3.2 Fairies and witches
3.3 Elf-shot and milk-stealing
3.4 Fairyland and the dead
3.5 The vampire
3.6 Human counter-measures
3.7 Shapeshifting and the werewolf
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4. The integral body: Theories of blood
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4.1 The liquid body and the spirited blood
4.2 Consumptive diseases
4.3 Bleeding and putrefaction
4.4 Breaking physical boundaries: blood and imagination
4.5 Passions of the mind. Frenzy, madness and melancholy
4.6 The intruder: epilepsy, envy and fascination
4.7 Menstruation
4.8 The diffusion of medical theories and folk-remedies
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5. Feeding your own demon: The case of England
5.1 Blood connections: the devil’s mark, fairy tradition and the familiar spirit
5.2 The nurturing witch
5.3 The animal form and the representation of the soul
5.4 Scratching
5.5 Witch-bottles and counter-magic
5.6 The power to harm and Protestant influences
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6. Witches, love magic and healing blood: The case of Italy
6.1 The magical universe, Inquisition and the body
6.2 Vampire witches
6.3 The power of touch and maleficium
6.4 Evil eye and the importance of feelings
6.5 Menstrual blood, love magic
6.6 Saints, healing blood and relics
6.7 Blood, magic and the sacred in the Catholic world
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Conclusion
Bibliography
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Abstract
This thesis focuses on the significance of blood and the perception of the body in both
learned and popular culture in order to investigate problems of identity and social
exclusion in early modern Europe. Starting from the view of blood as a liminal
matter, manifesting fertile, positive aspects in conjunction with dangerous, negative
ones, I show how it was believed to attract supernatural forces within the natural
world. It could empower or pollute, restore health or waste corporeal and spiritual
existence. While this theme has been studied in a medieval religious context and by
anthropologists, its relevance during the early modern period has not been explored. I
argue that, considering the impact of the Reformation on people’s mentalities,
studying the way in which ideas regarding blood and the body changed from late
medieval times to the eighteenth century can provide new insights about patterns of
social and religious tensions, such as the witch-trials and persecutions. In this regard
the thesis engages with anthropological theories, comparing the dialectic between
blood and body with that between identity and society, demonstrating that they both
spread from the conflict of life with death, leading to the social embodiment or to the
rejection of an individual. A comparative approach is also employed to analyze blood
symbolism in Protestant and Catholic countries, and to discuss how beliefs were
influenced by both cultural similarities and religious differences. Combining
historical sources, such as witches’ confessions, with appropriate examples from
anthropology I also examine a corpus of popular ideas, which resisted to theological
and learned notions or slowly merged with them. Blood had different meanings for
different sections of society, embodying both the physical struggle for life and the
spiritual value of the Christian soul. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 develop the dualism of the
fluid in late medieval and early modern ritual murder accusations against Jews,
European witchcraft and supernatural beliefs and in the medical and philosophical
knowledge, while chapters 5 and 6 focus on blood themes in Protestant England and
in Counter-Reformation Italy. Through the examination of blood in these contexts I
hope to demonstrate that contrasting feelings, fears and beliefs related to dangerous or
extraordinary individuals, such as Jews, witches, and Catholic saints, but also
superhuman beings such as fairies, vampires and werewolves, were rooted in the
perception of the body as an unstable substance, that was at the base of ethnic,
religious and gender stereotypes.
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1. Blood themes: Introduction
1.1 Blood, feelings and the soul. Perspectives
The subject of this thesis concerns the exploration of ideas on blood in early
modern Europe, considering the importance of religious and medical theories in
witchcraft beliefs and how they were assimilated by the population. From this study I
hope to demonstrate that blood, and the bodily symbolism attached to it, is not only a
reflection of social and individual beliefs, but can be used as means to read and
interpret them. Blood will be considered as a cultural theme which encloses values
and concepts of the world at different periods, and that can also be employed to
understand how human identity is built inside a society. In the words of the
anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his
Thick Description: toward an Interpretive
Theory of Cultures:
Culture is a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a
system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of
which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and
attitudes towards life.
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In this work blood themes will be employed to explore the early modern European
world as a multifaceted reality, a corpus of interwoven theories and notions, ranging
from the belief in witches to the medical knowledge of the body, and the two
diverging religious contexts of Protestantism and Catholicism, which will be
compared to find significant variations or parallels. It is also clear that different views
of blood not only correspond to different faiths, but to the presence of plural blood
traditions, medical and religious, and to the perception of them by different groups of
people within the same society. Thus we are confronted with the problem of
identification. We need to be aware of the background and nature of the people we
are discussing. ‘Popular culture’ seems in fact more than a homogeneous complex of
beliefs a quite vague concept, concerning different branches of the same society.
According to the cultural historian Peter Burke, the usual definition of “people” in
Clifford Geertz,
The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays.
(New York: Basic Books, 1973),
p.89
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